Bioinformatics is the science of managing, mining, and interpreting information from biological data. Various genome projects have contributed to an exponential growth in DNA and protein sequence databases. Advances in high-throughput technology such as microarrays and mass spectrometry have further created the fields of functional genomics and proteomics, in which one can monitor quantitatively the presence of multiple genes, proteins, metabolites, and compounds in a given biological state. The ongoing influx of these data, the presence of biological answers to data observed despite noises, and the gap between data collection and knowledge curation have collectively created exciting opportunities for data mining researchers.

While tremendous progress has been made over the years, many of the fundamental problems in bioinformatics, such as protein structure prediction, gene-environment interaction, and regulatory pathway mapping, are still open. Data mining will play essential roles in understanding these fundamental problems and development of novel therapeutic/diagnostic solutions in post-genome medicine.

Workshop History (2001-2007)

Data Mining approaches seem ideally suited for Bioinformatics, since it is data-rich, but lacks a comprehensive theory of life's organization at the molecular level. The extensive databases of biological information create both challenges and opportunities for developing novel KDD methods. To highlight these avenues we organized the Workshops on Data Mining in Bioinformatics (BIOKDD 2001-2007), held annually in conjunction with the ACM SIGKDD Conference.
This will be the 8th year for the workshop.

The goal of this workshop is to encourage KDD researchers to take on the numerous challenges that Bioinformatics offers. This year, the workshop will feature a theme “complex biological systems” and “knowledge discovery”. Different from analyzing single molecules, complex biological systems consist of components that are in themselves complex and interacting with each other. Understanding how the various components work in concert, using modern high-throughput biology and data mining methods, is crucial to the ultimate goal of genome-based economy such as genome medicine and new agricultural and energy solutions.

Phylogenetics and comparative Genomics

DNA microarray data analysis

RNAi and microRNA Analysis

Protein/RNA structure prediction

Sequence and structural motif finding

Modeling of biological networks and pathways

Statistical learning methods in bioinformatics

Computational proteomics

Computational biomarker discoveries

Computational drug discoveries

Biomedical text mining

Biological data management techniques

Semantic webs and ontology-driven biological data integration methods

Papers should be at most 10 pages long, single-spaced, in font size 10 or larger with one-inch margins on all sides. Paper should be submitted in PDF/PS format through Easychar at the following link: http://www.easychair.org/conferences?conf=biokdd08

All papers will be published at the workshop proceedings and at the ACM digital library.

Submission of accepted papers. For accepted workshop papers, we require that each camera-ready paper be formatted strictly according to the official ACM Proceedings Format. Please submit PDF file only. To prepare for the camera-ready PDF file submission, you may use either the Microsoft word template or the Latex files preparation instructions found here. All final camera-ready submissions must be accompanied by a completed digital copy (scanned Okay) of the ACM copyright transfer form, or else the paper cannot be included in the final workshop proceedings.

Publication of proceeding and expanded papers. Expanded version of selected high-quality papers from the workshop will be invited for publication in a special issue of a major bioinformatics/biocomputing journal (in 2007, it was Journal of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology). Details of the journal/book publication will be announced after the workshop at the workshop's web site.

Location: BIOKDD '08 will be held in the morning of August 24th 2008, in conjuction with ACM KDD 2008, at Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. The following is the contact information for the hotel:

Loews Lake Las Vegas Resort101 Montelago BoulevardHenderson, Nevada

Registration

Note:

The BIOKDD '08 workshop presenter-only registrations are now closed.

To attend the workshop, you do not need to register with us.

BIOKDD '08 attendees (except for presenters) may check with the ACM SIGKDD '08 conference and go through this registration process to officially register for workshop and get printed workshop proceedings from them.

Schedule

The workshop will be held on August 24th 2008 at the SIGKDD '08 conference site.